The long, tangled story behind the Birdy Rose Calendars

From a thread by Birdy Rose

I am very excited & relieved to FINALLY have these calendars in my office. Those of you who ordered one has recieved regular email updates from me explaining what was happening & I am so grateful for your understanding & patience.

For the rest of you, I’ll explain now:

A few days before Christmas I had received an email notifying me that the printing company I’ve been using for 10 years has decided to cancel my calendar order, claiming that it had been flagged as “offensive” and/or “inciting hatred”

I was of course, absolutely gutted.

I don’t believe it’s right to force anyone to produce work or in this case, print things that they don’t agree with. So I of course went ahead finding another printer to get this calendar made. In the meantime, I chose to challenge the printing company on their decision making. I challenged them for a few reasons.

One is this printing company had no problem printing my calendars last year & had even gone ahead with printing my dinosaur “Worthy Of Respect in a Dinocratic Society” stickers which were for this year’s calendar, those were not cancelled.

This confused me so I wrote back expressing confusion at the decision not to print the calendars but to go ahead with the stickers.

I also wanted to challenge this weird interpretation of my art. It is a calendar to celebrate brave women who are speaking up for women’s rights.

I did get a reply, this time not only accusing my art of being “offensive” & “inciting hatred” but also of “promoting anti-transgender ideology” which is disingenuous considering that there is not one mention of of the words “trans” or “Transgender” in any of my art pieces.

I had a look at the instagram page to see if their t&c’s hold up to scrutiny & I was quite stunned at the hypocrisy of their claims against me. Whether you agree with these images or not, I reckon all of this merch could be interpreted as “offensive” &/or “inciting hatred”

I also noticed it’s clear that when it comes to “promoting ideology” this company is happy to entertain “both sides” of other topics, such as eating meat…

What if there’s a vegan employee who finds the second image offensive? Or a meat eater who thinks vegans are hateful?

For me, this makes their terms and conditions confusing & unclear. They are not using a consistent definition of the words “offensive” & “inciting hatred”. So I had a long think about what can be done to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. I then wrote back with some suggestions.

I’m waiting for a reply, I don’t know if I’ll get one. It shouldn’t be like this, we’re in a time where it is apparently “inciting hatred” to support brave women. The good news is that after an incredibly frustrating delay, the calendars are finally here & they look amazing.

I also have 50 extra calendars available (as the minimum order was 250). Due to the massive delay, the calendars have been amended to start February 2022 & finish January 2023. If anyone wants one, I’m posting over the next few days so get in quick.

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Graham here: One day, people will ask why these calendars began and ended in February, and you’ll be able to say because for a few years in 2020, misogyny was so fashionable that Awesome Merchandise felt comfortable cancelling a feminist’s order because she celebrated other feminists.